Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Eddie Redmayne has said he wants to be an ally to the transgender community. The star, who plays Lili Elbe, the first trans woman to undergo gender reassignment surgery, in The Danish Girl, appeared on the Graham Norton show.

He said: “It’s been 15 years in the making and has come out at time when there has been such a shift in these issues coming to the mainstream.

“The story is so beautiful and the people from the trans community I met in preparing for the part were incredibly generous. It has been a privilege and, while not in any way talking for the community, I’m trying to learn to be an ally.”

Of going out into the streets of Copenhagen as Elbe, he continued: “I was trying to get all sort of ‘method’ on it, but I’m not sure how successful I was, because at six foot tall with a red wig and wearing 1920s gear people just stared. But

...Jennifer Lawrence...trades 'puking' stories with Eddie Redmayne on Graham Norton Show
...The show was recorded a few weeks ago but will air on BBC One on New Year's Eve, with talk soon turning to the A-lister's actual plans for December 31.
Jennifer, appearing on Graham's show for the first time ever, revealed that she isn't a fan of the holiday, admitting: 'I really hate it. I've never had a good one… I always end up drunk and disappointed.' Adding jokingly, 'Drunk and Disappointed' should be the title of my memoir!'...
Jennifer...explained: 'I am a puker. When I get stressed and exhausted I just vomit... I threw up at Madonna's party – on the porch!'
Eddie, on the show to chat about his big 2016 Oscar contender The Danish Girl, was quick to interrupt, as he declared: 'This is something I have never admitted to the world, but I puked at Madonna's party too!'The Graham Norton Show New Year's special airs on BBC One 31st December at 10.45pm...Read more(via)
Update 2nd Jan 2016: The puking stories weren't in the final version of the show, fortunately they deleted them. I think this is not a good topic for the show. The show was great, you can check my post about it here.

This is not the first time they chat about puking Eddie talked to Jennifer about his disastrous night at

BBC Radio1: Scott Mills chats with Eddie Redmayne - Podcast
Funny interview in 3 parts - Listen from 2:39:18, then at 2:47:11 and again from 3:09:57
He talked about why he isn't on social media, how does he feel watching himself on screen (He’s never seen the
fully finished version of The Danish Girl), he said his taste of music is awful (pop) and didn't named his favorites
(Is it Eurovision? - It’s not quite that bad.)You can download the episode hereEddie Redmayne Is 'The Danish Girl' on ABC News - Podcast
Hear Eddie Redmaye Is "The Danish Girl" by Jason Nathanson and more Entertainment pieces on ABC News.The link of the podcast works only in the US and Canada :(Eddie Redmayne is one of the nominees in the Best Actor category on the AWFJ‘s recently released nomination list for the 2015 EDA Awards.
Updated on 2 Jan..2016, 13:35

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

...The February issue of Empire boasts a new look at its hero, Eddie Redmayne’s Newt Scamander, in his new home of ‘20s New York...

“Newt is a magizoologist who’s just completed a global journey to find and document magical creatures for a book he plans on writing,” Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts producer David Heyman tells Empire. “His case is important because it contains some of the creatures he’s been researching. It may be small, but there’s a whole world within.”

A bottomless case filled with magical beasties, then? Might there be a dragon or two? Heyman isn’t saying but he did give an insight into the scale of the production, currently filming at Potter HQ, Watford's Leavesden Studios. “On some days we’ve had several hundred extras, all done up in 1920s costumes. We are going into the magical world, but we’re bringing the magical characters into the Muggle, or ‘Nomaj’, world.”

The Harry Potter films were, of course, crafted like period pieces themselves, albeit within a modern-day setting, but it’s intriguing to think how this well-oiled Warner Bros. machine might reimagine the era of the Jazz Age and the Wall Street Crash, only with mythical creatures and magical mammals. For more clues, check out the movie's first teaser...Read more

Eddie Redmayne about the different types of roles he prefer:
"I’m doing a film at the moment, J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which couldn’t be more different from playing Lili, but definitely has its own challenges. The thing that drives you as an actor is getting lucky enough to be able to choose to play interesting people, whether they’re real or fictional. I’ve been pretty blessed.On Fantastic Beasts spoilers:
"You know what? Whenever I hear someone ask about Fantastic Beasts, I feel like there are dudes from Warner Bros. with wands snipering from buildings. All I can say is that J.K. Rowling has written something that is totally fantastical. When I read it, it just made me smile. I had a massive smile across my face as I read it, so I hope we can do it justice." (x)via
“I would like to take this opportunity to reassure Muggle purchasers that the amusing creatures described hereafter
are fictional and cannot hurt you.To wizards, I say merely: Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus.”
/ J.K. Rowling, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them/ via

David Yates reveals how the cast of 'Fantastic Beasts' was built
(David Yates interview about Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them)
..."It was like putting a rock band together. We saw so many people. We got Eddie; he was our anchor, and I knew once we’d got him, we had to build the world around him. The other characters in this world had to react to him; they had to have a chemical reaction with Eddie. So we went to New York and saw some really fine actors, a lot of them, over two or three days, one after the other in the same room, all of them with Eddie." ...
source: Pottermore (via)

Pottermore: Eddie Redmayne on the coat that made Dan Radcliffe jealous
...‘It’s interesting, my costume, because one of the main routes into this character is the way he moves,’ Eddie tells me. ‘With the tightness at the top of that coat, Newt’s a compact kind of guy, especially when you think about all the vials and magic he can fit in that coat. The trousers are slightly too short for him too, which works for the way I move as him.’...

And another new image from Fantastic Beasts, with Eddie Redmayne flanked by sidekicks

Finding an actor with the right mix of qualities to play Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was even tougher than concocting one of Snape’s potions. Producer David Heyman and director David Yates, who worked together on the final four Harry Potter films, needed a leading man for this prequel with enough charisma to play the globetrotting 1920s magizoologist who carries with him a weathered case of creatures, but he knew a big name might have too much, well, baggage to inhabit the role. Enter Eddie Redmayne, fresh from his Oscar win for The Theory of Everything. “He’s good at playing outsiders; Newt is a bit of an eccentric, and we felt Eddie could do that with truth,” Heyman explains. –James Hibberd EW

...While Einar’s bare landscapes were a hit in Copenhagen, Denmark, Gerda’s feminine portraits were never quite accepted by the Danish art community. After Einar started transitioning into Lili, she became Gerda’s muse. Her Art Nouveau portraits of Lili became her breakthrough and earned her fame and recognition as an artist in Paris. “It was alluring to people to see someone as spectacularly beautiful as Lili and as different,” Stewart explained of the paintings’ success. Stewart teamed up with British artist Susannah Brough and they eventually settled on roughly 70 artworks to re-create for the film. “We laid them all out and went through the script with Tom and writer Lucinda [Coxon] and plotted which ones would hit each scene,” she said. “We only had two months to re-create all of them. By the end we were all in that painting room! The film’s paintings weren’t exact replicas of Gerda’s work, however. “We had to adapt them slightly because they didn’t look like Eddie,” Stewart said. The original portrait of ballerina Ulla Poulsen, the one that changed Lili’s life forever, was also altered to resemble actress Amber Heard’s face. In addition to the release of The Danish Girl, this month, Denmark’s Arken Museum of Modern Art will be displaying the largest exhibition of Gerda’s work so far, a development that delighted Stewart. “I think she would have been so thrilled that finally she was taken seriously by the Danish.”...

"I want to be a woman, not a painter,” says Einar Wegener to his artist wife, Gerda, who wryly reminds him

that some have succeeded at being both....

“What you draw, I become,” Lili says to Gerda. “You made me beautiful, and now you make me stronger.”

The film has sparked renewed interest in not only Lili, but also Gerda Wegerner’s art and life. She was similarly
self-styled, independent and determined, and her work was often unapologetically erotic. Her paintings, which combined the influence of Cubism and other avant-garde styles with traditionally “feminine” subjects such as
women in gardens or at their toilettes, are the subject of a major exhibition at the Arken Museum in Copenhagen,
on view through 16 May 2016. (x)

‘The Danish Girl’ on display – In a small Greenwich gallery lies the art that fuels the film

Anyone who can venture to this New York City suburb can see Gerda Wegener’s original art of Lili.(x)

"The love story at the center of this film was for me, and I'm incredibly biased, but it felt like one of the great love stories of the 20th century in some ways, and I couldn't believe I didn't know about Lili," Redmayne said.

Lili is who Redmayne's character becomes, trying to navigate what it means to be transgendered at a time when there was no vocabulary for it.

Redmayne did as much research as he could on this real-life person and to further understand Lili, he met with several trans women to hear their stories.

"It's been almost a hundred years since their story, and yet some of the things that Lili had to deal with - the discrimination, the violence - speaking to trans women now, it's staggering how little progress there's been in many ways," he said.

Director Tom Hooper handed Redmayne "The Danish Girl" script four years ago when they were making "Les Miserables." Redmayne knew, instinctively, he needed to take on the role.

"I was moved unlike anything I've ever read. It was a deeply unique love story and about the fact that love is not defined by gender or by bodies - but it's really souls," Redmayne said.

For his work in "The Danish Girl," Redmayne is back in the awards arena, nominated for several acting honors.

"This film has taken 15 years to get made and if any sort of buzz or that sort of thing encourages people to go see it,

"There's been decades of prejudice against trans people and trans stories. So, maybe there's no surprise that the story of these two early pioneers, and their love, has been kind of pushed to the sidelines and forgotten. So, at the very least, I wanted the film to redirect attention to this incredible couple who went through this transition -- you know, at a time when the word “transgender” did not exist, when there was no roadmap to transition." Tom Hooper, director of The King's Speech (Film), discusses his latest film The Danish Girl, which tells the story of Lili Elbe, one of the first known recipients of sex reassignment surgery, and her partner Gerda Wegener.

"When I was making Jupiter Ascending with Lana Wachowski, I mentioned Lili and Gerda's (Elbe's wife, played by Alicia Vikander) story to her, and she spoke so passionately about Gerda's art and [Lili's autobiography] Man Into Woman, which was published after her death."
Eddie says the advice he received from members of the transgender community ranged from practical to inspirational.
"There were surface things some of the women would say," he recalls. "April Ashley, an elder trans woman in England said, when I was talking to her about my voice, 'Don't go up in pitch. Find the femininity in your own voice.'"
One of the keys to understanding Elbe, he says, was "this idea that Lili was born Lili. Society and her notion of what was right in that period meant she had a forced masculinity." When Elbe first began to transition, "there was almost an affectation to her femininity. Some of the trans women I spoke to talked about this phase of hyper-feminization, when you're wearing too much makeup or clothes that are too feminine." ...
(For much more from Redmayne, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now.)

New York Times: The Liberation of Lili in ‘The Danish Girl’
...The character’s evolution — or liberation, as Mr. Delgado described it — is a struggle as Mr. Redmayne swings like a pendulum between Einar and Lili, masculine and feminine, suits and dresses.
Finding the right balance for each scene was a group effort involving Mr. Delgado; the makeup and hair designer Jan Sewell; Tom Hooper, the director; and Mr. Redmayne, all of whom had worked together previously on “Les Misérables.”
Unofficial fittings began almost a year before “The Danish Girl” was announced to the public. “It was during one of those first camera tests that we found Lili; we knew it was going to work,” Ms. Sewell said....Read more

Favorite old blogs

Venice September 5, 2015

About Me

My name is Judit.I'm a Hungarian architect, a huge fan of Eddie Redmayne. I'm a grandma of two, but stayed teen in spirit. Eddie delights my days with his talent, kindness and beauty. I love to dive into his world. This blog is like a diary.

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